Discipline 'a very faint mark' in PCUSA, Gathering told By Craig M. Kibler The Layman Online Wednesday, October 8, 2003 PORTLAND, Ore. – Calling discipline one of the three marks of the church, Peggy Hedden told the Gathering on Tuesday that, in the Presbyterian Church (USA) today, "it is a very faint mark." Hedden, who is on the board of the Presbyterian Coalition which sponsored Gathering VIII and is a member of the Coalition's task force on discipline, said the "idea of discipline is not a strategy. We know that its presence and exercise is the way in which the church keeps its integrity between what it says and what it does." Saying that there were a few "bright spots" regarding discipline within the denomination, Hedden referred to the Presbytery of Cincinnati, which voted 119-45 on June 16 that the Rev. A. Stephen Van Kuiken had renounced the jurisdiction of the church by defying a presbytery court's order not to perform same-gender "marriages." Previously, the court had rebuked him for violating church law by conducting services for homosexual couples that he described as "marriages." Even after the rebuke, Van Kuiken conducted, with the authorization of the session of Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church, such a ceremony. Melissa Sevier, the presbytery's executive officer, told The Layman Online that a number of church legal questions remained, including whether Van Kuiken may pursue an appeal to the synod since he no longer has standing as a minister and whether he may seek a stay of enforcement in a renunciation case. She said the presbytery will seek the advice of the denomination's Office of the General Assembly. After the vote to oust Van Kuiken, Bruce Archibald, chairman of the presbytery's Committee on Ministry, said, "Some people will try to make us feel guilty, saying that we have kicked Steve Van Kuiken out of the presbytery. I want you to understand this: We're not kicking anybody out of the church. We're finding that this person, through his word and action, has removed himself from our church." "The sad news," Hedden said, is that Van Kuiken "was not brought to repentance," which is the goal of discipline. A second bright spot was the Minihan case, said Hedden, who also is the chairman of the Presbyterian Lay Committee. On July 15, the denomination's highest court ruled that, whether because of dissent or inability to pay, sessions have the right to withhold the payment of per-capita apportionments to support presbyteries, synods and the General Assembly. "[W]e hereby reaffirm this Commission's holding that 'a church may neither be compelled to pay nor punished for failure to pay any amounts pursuant to such [per capita] plan,'" the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission said in affirming a 1991 ruling by the same body. And while the commission did affirm the voluntary nature of per capita, it added that "there is a high moral obligation based on the grace and call of God to participate fully in the covenant community." The unanimous decision affirmed a historic Presbyterian and Biblical principle: that "the Lord loves a cheerful giver" and that church leaders cannot be compelled to support higher governing bodies. The commission overturned a previous ruling by a synod court that said the Presbytery of Scioto Valley in Ohio had acted appropriately in adopting a policy resolution to compel per-capita payments. The synod court's ruling was appealed by the Rev. John C. Minihan, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Newark, Ohio, and J. Randall Richards, a lawyer who is an elder at Liberty Presbyterian Church in Delaware, Ohio. The Scioto Valley policy said no congregation was exempt from payment unless it was specifically excused by the presbytery. Per-capita contributions pay for administrative and some program costs of the presbyteries, synods and the General Assembly. On the other hand, Hedden said, there were a "bunch of erasures that happened in this past year. Even though the General Assembly PJC decision on per capita was unanimous, Heartland Presbytery has instituted a proposal that punishes congregations that withhold per capita." The pastor of a growing evangelical congregation in Paola, Kan., has asked a synod court to declare that the presbytery violated the denomination's Constitution by punishing his congregation for its session's decision not to pay its per-capita apportionment to support the General Assembly. The remedial complaint by the Rev. A. Kirk Johnston of First Presbyterian Church said the presbytery violated the constitution by prohibiting presbytery approval of his congregation's efforts to secure a permanent loan for church expansion. Johnston's congregation has a temporary construction loan of $1.2 million for a $2.2-million project that was under way when the presbytery adopted a new financial policy June 17. That policy says "no congregation [will] be considered eligible to request assistance from the presbytery in the form of mission support, shared grants or loan guarantees unless that congregation has demonstrated its full participation in the fiscal and ecclesiastical life of the presbytery including the paying of per capita, the making and meeting of a mission pledge, being current on Board of Pensions dues, the filling of annual statistical reports, and the annual reporting of the pastor's terms of call." If allowed to stand, the presbytery's financial policy would jeopardize the congregation's ability to get a permanent loan for the project. With rare exception, all local church property in the PCUSA is held in trust by the presbytery for the denomination and local congregations cannot take out loans on their property without presbytery approval. But church law – affirmed in two decisions by the PCUSA's highest governing body, the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission – says local church sessions have the authority to decide how to spend the tithes and offerings contributed by their congregations. Furthermore, the courts have declared that local congregations cannot be punished by the presbyteries for failure to remit their per-capita apportionments, whether for reasons of conscience or inability. Ordination standards were the next major series of erasures, Hedden said. In January, a petition drive by Alex F. Metherell, a commissioner from Laguna Beach, Calif., to require Moderator Fahed Abu-Akel to call the 214th General Assembly back into session to deal with constitutional defiance was torpedoed by Abu-Akel and Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick. The petition drive was instigated by continued defiance of the constitution by Christ Church in Burlington, Vt. "Cliff Kirkpatrick and Fahed Abu-Akel took extra-constitutional and unconstitutional procedures to see that the special session would not happen," Hedden said. Unlike the petition for the special meeting of the 214th General Assembly, an overture before the 215th General Assembly from the Presbytery of Redstone did not ask the commissioners to become involved in the ongoing disciplinary cases. It made some suggestions, notably to "remind all synods of their responsibility for oversight of their presbyteries," but did not propose that the General Assembly intervene in the process of defending and preserving the denomination's constitution. That overture, she said, "died a very quiet death and the General Assembly refused to exert any of its influence to discipline Christ Church, which simply retitled its statement of defiance." Next week, Hedden said, there will be another erasure or bright spot when the Synod of the Mid-Atlantic is scheduled to receive the report of a special review committee looking into the Presbytery of Baltimore "for refusing to discipline the Rev. Don Stroud," an openly gay minister. He works for a pro-gay ordination group called That All May Freely Serve. Several erasures occurred in complaints filed in the Presbytery of Hudson River against two ministers accused of conducting same-sex "marriages" and ordaining lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people as deacons and elders. On October 3, 2002, attorney Paul Rolf Jensen filed accusations against Joseph H. Gilmore and Susan G. De George, co-pastors of South Presbyterian Church in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. He also filed similar charges against Jean A. F. Holmes of the Nauraushaun Presbyterian Church in Pearl River, N.Y. and Jack S. Miller of Mt. Kisco Presbyterian Church in N.Y. Citing statements published by all four ministers in which they refused to comply with the denomination's ordination standards, Jensen alleged that the ministers openly defied the denomination's constitution. The constitution, including the Book of Order, requires that ordained leaders of the denomination live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness. In statements sent to other church leaders and posted on the Web site of the pro-gay ordination group More Light Presbyterians, the four ministers said their consciences will not permit them to obey this requirement. On Sept. 23, the presbytery voted to accept a committee's report that no action be taken against the two ministers. An erasure of major importance, Hedden said, occurred two weeks ago in the Presbytery of Western North Carolina when an investigating committee decided not to file heresy charges against a Presbyterian minister accused of denying "that he believed in the bodily resurrection and ascension into Heaven of our Lord Jesus Christ as taught by Scripture and our Confessions." The committee had been investigating a disciplinary complaint against the Rev. W. Robert Martin III, who was seeking to become pastor of the 300-member First Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto, Calif. A petition for review has been filed in the case. "The mark of disciple in the denomination is quite faint and is fading," Hedden said. "There are those who say to trust the process, that the process is working. I don't see much evidence of it. Don't trust the process. Keep your eyes on Jesus Christ – it is his church and he will do his will with justice and with mercy."

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